De[ad]cember

The end of the year is nigh....

Ominous eh?

Okay, maybe not. Goodbye 2015, hello 2016 - I turn 40 later this new year, now THAT is ominous!

My Kickstarter rewards from the last Red Box Games Kickstarter arrived along with a set of their lovely zombie models and I've been painting furiously during my week off (Which is now at an end, I go back to work once more on the morrow - another ominous moment.). This set of 9 undead are all individual sculpts and great ones too, which was great and all are on the gore-lite side of zombie, which was also somewhat refreshing, but also made for painting to be a quick and simple affair. I'm not really inclined to put amazing amounts of effort into low hitpoint badguys as they'll probably spend little time on the tabletop in my rpg, being so easy to kill! (again)

Group shot - lots of shambliness and minlessness about this lot. Which i like very much.

Really like these sculpts - far more creepy side of zombies captured in contrast with the typical goriness and violence that other manufacturers produce like say, Mantic or GW.

These are all seem best suited to a fantasy environment due to their attire seeming rather poor and peasant-like.

And all bald and incredibly scrawny, which indicates less violent deaths, and probably more virus/disease-based endings for these poor souls.

Now I think about it,  these zombies will also be perfect for use with the recently released Dragon Rampant (Currently on sale, cheap! Click the link to see details.) rules set by Osprey Publishing!!! (Their fantasy version of their awesome Medieval/Dark Ages skirmish rules set, Lion Rampant - also currently on sale, cheap!)

 Also got this crossbow wielding fellow finished for my Frostgrave project. He's a rather old Citadel Miniatures (I think) orc, with exquisite detail sculpted throughout I think. I've painted him up in my Hobgoblins scheme rather than a typical green due tot he fact that orcs in my settings are of the pig-faced variety.

Lovely determined expression on this one.

A pouch of bolts and a nice hand axe hanging from his belt. Thought the red grip on the axe contrasted well with the brown leathers and purple jerkin.

Sheepskin seemed the more believable choice for his furs - sheep are easier to "hunt" than wolves or bears.

Lastly and again for my Frostgrave project, I slapped some paint on this 1983 TSR warhound. A fun and very simple sculpt and I decided he'd be a Doberman. At least that was what I was going for.

Per-dullcote, so the grassy loose pieces are long cleaned.

And a little out of focus on the face in this one, the chainmail also looks more defined in real life.

Not sure I'll get in another post before the New Year comes around proper, though I am working on my final two character miniatures for my rpg campaign, which will allow me to commence running it in the next couple weeks or so! (I'll be sure to leave an account here if there's any interest.)

Happy New Year to you all - I hope hobby-wise, it's a fruitful and fun 366 days! (It being a Leap Year and all.)

- Dai

Tally Ho!

It's Christmas eve and today I present a figure that I'd painted a couple of weeks ago as a Christmas gift for my stepfather.  But he sometimes stops by to see what I've been up to here, so I didn't want to ruin the surprise.  

The miniature is by Warlord Games from their Bolt Action range and is depicting a WW2 RAF pilot who has been shot down. Typically stoic, it seems the fellow is remaining cool enough under pressure to enjoy a bowl of navy cut.

And that's that. There's been plenty other painting done but I've been taking a break from posting, so I'll be sure to show off my work this weekend.

 Merry Christmas all, I hope Santa brings you brushes and shiny new toys for your unpainted mountains!

End of the Challenge

On June 1st the 2nd 6 Month Mountain Reduction Painting Challenge commenced with all sorts of rules and so forth in an effort for blogging hobbyists to try to get rid of their unpainted piles of metal and plastic miniatures and pledge to try not to make purchases during the duration and make their backlogs bigger.

The 1st Challenge (Last year) saw me largely painting my 15mm Flames of War Canadian platoons and I feel I did pretty well as far as limiting purchases made. This year... was different - I had different projects to get done and most in 28mm. In the end I think I painted up around 90x 28mm figs and around 30x 15mm. Not great considering I've had 6 whole months to get stuff done, but it could be far far worse. I think also I ended up about even with projects completed and new purchases made. Maybe a little off even, with more purchases made - but certainly not horrendous.

It's been a fun 6 months and a busy one and I'm happy with the work I've turned out and look forward to the next Challenge.

During the last week of this Challenge I did get work done! An archer that can be used for both my Frostgrave warbands and future fantasy rpg gaming.

I think she's a late 90's early 00's Reaper mini. 

One day I'll come back to this one and add a little freehand to her cloak as that is one large boring space.

I also painted up a couple of skeleton archers for my upcoming rpg campaign. To account for extra majicks required to get a skeleton to shoot a bow, I felt the bows themselves would need a splash of sacrificial blood too. No idea how those quivers are sticking to their hips though - maybe more of the same majicks?

These are the old late 80's GW sculpts saved from my bits box. I had glued them decades ago, so  hence who the one on the left has crap looking shoulder joints.

No pic makes a blog more interesting, than that of skeleton bootie.

 Lastly, got these Saxon Slingers done. They are initially to be used for my Dark Ages (Lion Rampant) project, but I'll also be utilising them for Frostgrave as Archers or Javelineers. Simple sculpts, simple paint jobs.

And that's that. So much crap going on in my work life with Union nonsense, it's hard to feel up to painting right now. Hoping that it all sorts itself out and that the membership vote goes smoothly on Friday - wish us luck!

I'm a Maserati in a world of Kias

Frostgrave starting warbands are typically made up of a Wizard who represents “You”, his Apprentice who offers more opportunity to throw spells around each turn and a mixed assortment of mercenaries that you buy with a gold coin allotment.

To battle my son’s Ratmen Necromancer warband, I decided to go with the very opposite wizard type, a Thaumaturge who specializes in healing majicks and the like. For my wizard mini, I went with my already painted-up (For my rpg campaign) Druid. As his apprentice, I then decided to use my only other druid mini shown below. He’s a metal Privateer Press sculpt, Potent Bradigus. My son had the idea of painting him up with a completely different skin colour to his master, I also added some black dots as a type of tattoo after seeing an old black’n’white picture of a north African tribesman with similar markings. Not sure I carried it off right though. With this fellow done, I now have a fully painted warband to play with!

I like this sculpt - all sorts of quiet intimidation about it. The "axe" parts to his staff are painted up as stone rather than steel. Seemed more druidish to me.

Green cloak like all good druids should sport. Tried to give the shoulder pads a wood look, again to seem more "natural" than if he had metal.

Wizard and Apprentice. I think they'll do just fine against those evil rats... should.

 My son also got a couple more of his own Skaven ratmen painted up - a thug and a man-at-arms. He only has to paint a Templar and a Ranger and he'll also be ready for play. Now I just have to get all my terrain painted too.... Ugh.

1980's Jes Goodwin Skaven Slave and a more recent plastic Skaven Clanrat with a weapon switch. No idea why he needed one though.

A long time ago in a country far, far away a much younger self felt a need to cut the tip from the Skaven slave model. I have no recollection as to why. My son though, was delighted to find this out and gleefully painted blood effects accordingly.

 After finishing up my Apprentice, I had more time last night so slapped some paint on this late 90's GW Daemonette. Just a cheeky grey primer, white drybrush and a load of successive washes to get a fair pastel effect. My son and wife think she looks creepy for some reason. I'll be using her as a "Medium Demon" for Frostgrave.

Unlike the original 80's sculpts, these girls were far more brutish in design to get them away from the very sexualised originals. Whilst I do like this version very much, the lithe originals and current versions fit the descriptions for these Slaaneshi daemons far better.

This deadly young lady seems not to be lacking in rump.

And last up, a real quick paintjob on a Reaper Bones animal companion sculpt. It is meant to be a hawk or some such, but I wanted it to represent a raven or crow instead so went with black. It'll do for both my rpg campaign and Frostgrave's new Lich King supplement that I bought for my Kindle to expand my mission selections and also check out the cool sounding campaign.

His head seems to blend in with his body in this photo. Not that there's much to see. 

"Nevermore" quoth another raven. Not this one, he prefers Dylan Thomas to Ed Poe.

Last fortnight of the 6MMRPC!

Of course I slip up and forget to get my post up in time for last week's submission. Guess it'll mean that this post will be longer then, so make sure you're comfortable.

No games played since last post and I won't be able to get my FoW game in for Cameron's campaign in before the deadline of... tomorrow either. Which is poo. Ah well, real life schedules and all that.

Lots of painting done though and all over the place topics-wise at that.

First up, I went and bought the Frostgrave rules after reading some very good reviews and AAR's in blogs. I also loved the fact that I could use existing minis from my collection, so won't have to purchase new figures just to play. I even managed to get my son interested (Seems more into the hobby side of things than gaming for some reason.) and he's started painting up my odd collection of GW Skaven for his warband - of course, he plans to play them as Necromancers. So I'd like to present his own first members of his warband that he finished painting up over the weekend.

Wizard on the right, and Apprentice on the left. Wizard's right eye had a small miscast and so my son rightfully painted it up as a scar!

Whilst he was happy slapping paint about, I worked on some bits and pieces for the game, some treasure tokens and a boar incase it gets rolled for as a Wandering Monster.

The boar is an old Marauder Miniatures sculpt that had an orc rider. The greenstuff is to bulk out where the rider's legs would have sat. The bits for treasure tokens are random things from my bitsbox.

All painted up and ready to go. My son asked why the skull and femur were painted green - at first I want to say they were made of Jade, then instead told him they were just moldy. 

Squeal piggie, Squeal!

I also got a trio of Jomsviking Bondi painted up. Will do their shields when the whole unit is painted so they are more uniform. Saying that, shield-less, they are perfect candidates for use as Thugs in Frostgrave!

Picture looked just fine on my phone last night... O well, here they are, a bit out of focus. The bloke on the left actually has far more contrast between his gold faceplate and his beard, but this pic buggered that up. Regardless, I think this would count as a Movember entry. 

Bums!

This fellow grabbed my attention, so I worked on him too. He's an old 1980's TSR sculpt I think. Didn't realise until I was painting his flesh colours on that he has pointed ears and tusks(!), so I decided to see if I can include him in my rpg campaign. His background will be as a half- hobgoblin, half human bully-type and due to his mixed heritage, he'll be nicknamed the Ha'penny Hob!

Loads of fun detail on this sculpt, very unlike most of the TSR figs I own. I do love his big bushy eyebrows too!

Sneaky sod is brandishing spiked knuckles, yet hiding his real weapon behind his back!

The knuckles though I think had a dagger blade attached originally, but it must have broken off. His knife sheath was empty so I made a quick knife handle and glued it in on his hip. Also this pic shows his well sculpted ears!

Last up! For my ACW project, I managed to finish and base the command stand and an infantry base for my first infantry regiment.

The base on the left will be the one I stick printed unit details to, hence the Non-Com with the sword to make it easier to track. I'll be printing flags once all the regiments are painted. I think these fellows would count for a Movember entry don't you think?

Firestorm Caen: Turn 1

As mentioned maybe 2 or 7 times already in previous posts, Cameron at the Rust and the City blog is running an online Flames of War Firestorm Caen campaign. Densmol and I decided to get in on the action and got our first game underway this week.

It's D-Day and the allies are amassing off the French coast to push the hated German invaders back up into Northern Europe. The Canadian assault forces were to attack Juno beach in an effort to create a beachhead for the remainder of their assets to come ashore and fortify gains made that day.

Densmol took a German Infantry company and I a 3rd Canadian Assault Infantry Company, respective lists were taken from the Overlord and Atlantik Wall books to keep in theme. Neither of us own any beach terrain, nor fortifications, so we played the alternate mission (Fighting Withdrawal). I arranged the terrain on the board to loosely simulate the type of features that the Canadian forces would have had to cross right as they got off the beach and into the very beginning of French countryside and used this 1944 aerial photo as reference.

The area within the red box  was my inspiration for scenery placement. I just added the tree stands to make it so my PBI had "some" cover to hide behind as they advanced.

The forces were as follows:

Me

3rd Canadian Assault Company - Confident Trained

1 & 2iC (Plus Jeep that didn't feature all game)
Sniper
2x Full Infatry Platoons
4-stand 3" Mortar Platoon
Independent Sherman Tank platoon (3 regular shermans)
Breaching Group (Regular sherman, 2x sherman crab flail tanks & 2x Churchill AVsRE)
2x Crocodile Flame tanks
Recce Armoured Car platoon (3 Humber III's and 2 Humber LRC's)
I also had Medium Naval artillery with an AOP observer.

My Firestorm troops were a 3rd Infantry platoon and a 2nd Sherman tank platoon, though this one had a Firefly and 2 regular shermans.

Densmol

some sort of German Panzergrenadier Company - Confident Veteran

1 & 2iC with Kfz 251 half-tracks
2x Full Infantry Platoons with Kfz halftracks
4x Gun 15cm artillery
3x Nebelwerfer rocket artillery stands
2x Flak 88 AA guns
3x Panzer IV tanks
3x Luchs Recce tanks

 Densmol's Firestorm troops were a small 5-stand platoon of Confident Trained Infantry and a Pak40 AT Gun.

Per the scenario instructions, we played the Fighting Withdrawal mission with my Canadians as attackers. After all the Objectives were placed, these were our deployments:

A view pre-turn 1 from Densmol's side of the table.

Firestorm German infantry and AT gun, supported by Veteran 88 and Luch tanks.

Frightening 15cm German artillery.

The forces on the Canadian right flank

And the Canadian left flank looked remarkably similar, give or take a longer barrel.

Recce moves saw my Humbers darting up the furthest left flank to hide behind a bridge and Densmol's Luchs shifting more toward the center of the german deployment. (No arrow graphics for the Luchs move, I got fed up of messing with photos really quick.)

Turn One sees the shermans on the left moving up, leaving their Firefly behind so it can take advantage of some Semi-Indirect firing. This saw me roll a sweet double 6's to hit as my first dice of the game! Swiftly followed by double ones for firepower rolls....  *facepalm* Still, the only panzer iv visible has it's crew run off, too sensible to stick around for another 17 pounder gun shot. first blood to the good guys!

Densmol, not impressed at all having lost a tank already.

 Canadian center moves up, Breaching Group sherman tanks shoot at the other two Panzer iv's and miss all shots. Firestorm infantry in support. Crocodiles trundle forward through the woods without any mechanical issues.

Right most Sherman platoon Machineguns the German Firstorm infantry and kill one stand, but get the pin. Rightmost infantry platoon moves up in support.

Naval bombardment drops on the redeployed Luchs in the center and take out a tank!

Humbers Unleash a whole mess of shots at the Dug In and Gone to Ground artillery and.... miss every shot! The Canadian mortars though manage to pin the scary big guns. (Also, though not pictured, my sniper plops down opposite the 15cm's and fails to hit. This becomes a pattern.)

In German Turn One, the 15cm Artillery and Firestorm Infantry unpin. Then the remaining two Panzer iv's move to get clear shots and pop both Sherman Crab flail tanks.

The 15cm artillery drop a bombardment onto the 3 remaining Breaching group tanks, but only manage to bail a singe AVsRE!

The two German 88 guns take some tricky shots at the right most Sherman platoon, blow up two and bail the third! For some reason, the crew of the third feel it's a better idea to stay and fight than to run away...

 

The Luchs move over to help out the 15cm artillery and shoot at the Canadian armoured Cars, but fail to damage. 

After this the German tanks all make stormtrooper moves to get out of sight or get better shots for the following turn.

Turn Two opens with some lovely shooting by the sherman platoon who take out a second Luch. The third decides it would be safer to leave the field altogether and so the Canadians score a point.

Right of center, the Crocodiles are within flame range of the center german infantry who are holed up in the house and also the Firestorm infantry in the right most hedge. They unleash their terrible flamethrowers and kill three infantry in the building and two in the field.

The AVsRE fire their very short range Petard Mortars at the same building and kill another of the infantry stands forcing a morale check.... But the German 1iC is lurking behind the building and reminds them they have to stand firm!

(Some dramatic flame effects for those petard shots!)

 

The Armoured Cars once again open up on the big guns and this time do kill something, but it's not the guns, merely their platoon commander. The sniper again fails to hit.

On the right flank, the infantry assault the lone poor German artillery observer, in the hopes of drawing in the enemy Firestorm infantry. It works, but not nearly well enough as two German stands of infantry survive which means the platoon is at half strength, no need for a morale check yet.

German Turn Two and Densmol drops his ambush! His second Infantry platoon was hiding behind the hedges the whole time! (And in their half tracks too no less - not looking good for my right flank...)

The not-in-picture Nebelwerfer rockets barrage my very exposed rightmost infantry, killing two stands and pinning the platoon. The Newly arrived Panzergrenadiers in half-tracks first machinegun, then assault my poor infantry, making short work of them and the few survivors run foro their lives.

Followed by the final sherman on that flank getting blown to pieces by more 88 fire. My right flank is gone and the Panzergrenadiers are on the prowl. I'm now two platoons down and losing.

Panzer iv's line up some easy shots on the Breaching Group, but both miss! At the same time, the 15cm guns (Who couldn't unpin last turn.) get two cheeky direct shots off at the left flank sherman tanks and pop them both!

The German tanks Stormtrooper back out of Petard range and also of the Piat team in the ruins, whilst the sherman tanks at top left snap, crackle and pop with exploding ammunition.

Canadian turn Three. Notes and pictures get a little spotty from here as it was getting muy late and the wine had been flowing a bit freely. The Firefly once again uses some long range shots and manages to destroy a Panzer iv! Bloody last one sticks around though, again, the German 1iC reminding them of their duty.

The Firefly who could. Also on the left, my #1 infantry platoon, slowly making their way up to try to tackle the 15cm guns and then on to tackle the left most objective.

The mortar platoon realising it's in a rather vulnerable position, shuffles about so all teams can line up some direct shots at the Panzergrenadiers in half-tracks. 6 shots fire and!!!! Nothing. O dear. Meanwhile, the AOP calls in another bombardment and actually hits the German artillery, but only manages to kill their Staff team!

An overview of the turn.

German Turn Three sees Densmol remove the last Panzer iv under the strategic withdrawal rules. Damnit, I was ready to assault that tank in my turn as well! His artillery once again do not unpin. The halftracks trundle over unimpeded and machingun my poor mortars to death as expected. Now they are in my backfield.

Densmol's defense is looking good from here.

Canadian Turn Four and my Armoured Cars ONCE AGAIN open up on the artillery killing a single gun. (Densmol has rolled about 7 or 8 fives and sixes for saves on these big buggers. They should have dies two turns ago! The sniper tries to make himself useful and finally take out an artillery team from the bridge - hits (!) and then fails his fire power roll... Worst unit ever.

The now flamethrower-less Crocodiles manage to shoot and kill the Firestorm Pak40 and also blow up one of the half-tracks, killing the infantry inside.

German Turn Four starts with Densmol withdrawing the a required platoon and chooses the infantry in the central building. Then the 15cm guns decide they will stay pinned! The Nebelwerfer rockets bombard my central Firestorm infantry platoon and kill a stand, then the half-tracks move in and Machinegun two more. A 88 AA gun shoots and blows up both AVsRE Churchills and force the platoon commander regular sherman to flee the field of battle.

I'm now four platoons down and have to make a Company Morale test. I roll a one... Thankfully Assault Companies get a re-roll so I do and roll.... a three. 5-2 win for the Germans.

So Densmol's holding action allowed the remaining German troops who were manning the defenses at Juno Beach to get back and regroup safely and perhaps buy enough time for a counter attack whilst the Canadians get themselves reorganised.

It was a fun game on a very open table terrain-wise, though I felt it kept in theme because of this and so didn't mind the hard slog my poor bloody infantry had to get at those German positions. Saying all this though, it went on far longer than it should have due to us being rather rusty on rules after not playing for 2-3 months and we didn't end up finishing until almost 1:30am. ~_~

Round 2 rules of the campaign should be up tomorrow, so we'll try to get that in soon.